Review: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

I really liked Fantasia (1940) as a kid and recall being amazed at how well the music and ;animation synchronized in one of the most trippy of the Disney animated films. The centerpiece of Fantasia was the Sorcerer’s Apprentice scene, where Mickey Mouse used magic to clean his master’s lab, just to have the mops and brooms take on a life of their own. The message: magic is tricky work and not for amateurs.

Nicholas Cage was equally captivated by Mickey’s cameo in Fantasia, and made that the centerpiece of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, a glossy confection from Jerry Bruckheimer’s Pirates of the Caribbean team. Unfortunately, while Cage pulled a full-length story out of a short vignette, he skipped the hard part: making a great story.

The result is a film that, while enjoyable to watch, is shallow and unsatisfying, demonstrating yet again that Nic Cage has forgotten how to act. He walks through his role as Master Sorcerer Balthazar Blake as if it were a “one take” indie experiment, and even in scenes when he should have been elated, terrified, or angry, bland Nic Cage is all we get.

Regular guy Dave (a likeable Jay Baruchel) is the apprentice and a la Harry Potter and Percy Jackson, he’s plucked out of a mundane existence as a student at NYU and learns that he has hidden powers as a sorcerer and is, in fact, the only person who can stop the evil sorceress Morgana (Alice Krige) from unleashing unspeakable evil on the Earth. Or something like that.

Starting with the time-tested story device of everyman learning he has amazing special powers, director Jon Turteltaub has given us a piece of eye candy, a film that’s pleasant enough to watch and has the splendid production quality of all Bruckheimer’s movies, but has no depth, no engaging roles and a storyline as banal as they come. I’d skip The Sorcerer’s Apprentice if I were you.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice starts out with way too much back story, setting the scene in 740AD Britain where we witness a war between Merlin and Sorcerers Horvath (Alfred Molina), Balthazar (Cage), and Morgana (Krige). They fight over the deadly The Rising spell that would raise an army of the dead (didn’t Brendan Fraser fight that same spell in The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor?) and it ends with Horvath, Morgana and Balthazar’s girlfriend Veronica (Monica Bellucci) trapped in a “grimmold” doll until…

Cut to ten years ago when our everyman hero Dave is in 4th grade on a field trip in NYC and finds himself in an odd curio shop that wouldn’t be out of place in Diagon Alley, run by an eccentric long-haired Balthazar. He wreaks unintentional havoc, embarrasses himself in front of his teacher and classmates, and spends the next decade as the school outcast.

Cut again to modern time and Horvath is freed and begins his dastardly plot to free Morgana so she can unleash that wicked The Rising spell and rule over all the mortals on Earth.

There’s some befuddled nonsense about Merlinians vs Morganians (get it? Merlin-ians and Morgana-ians?) but it’s so bizarre that even the characters in the film scratch their heads over that unnecessary plot detail.

Still with me? If you are thinking that the script tries really hard to create a story, hard enough to leave us confused about who’s who, you’d be right. Fortunately, there are a number of pleasant scenes along the way to ease the incessant narration, including one where Dave meets up with his unrequited love Becky (Teresa Palmer).

As much as I disliked Cage’s performance in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, I again found myself delighted by Alfred Molina’s presence on screen. He’s becoming a formidable supporting actor, most recently being the highlight of The Prince of Persia.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice has a line explaining that “normal people use 10% of their brains, but sorcerers can use all 100%”. That being the case, it’s too bad that no-one on the production team used that spare 90% of their brain to figure out that the story was just too weak to sustain a full-length film, great special effects or not.

2 comments on “Review: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”

Awesome review, Dave! Thanks for the info and the head’s up. I still sort of want to see this, and hope that I can find worth within it. I too, very much liked Mickey Mouse’s sorcerer, and am having difficulty seeing any connection between this film and the scene in Fantasia, but oh well, Hollywood doesn’t need much more than the smallest of ideas from which to spawn a feature length film. Though making a quality film, is often another story altogether.

Gotta say, I just got back from watching it, and I found it entertaining and engaging. Which is all I really require from a summer movie.
I can understand your distain…it cannot, for sure, be ranked with any ‘greats’ of summer movies, but hey, it did what they wanted. It got them cash, and I got some hours of enjoyment, wondering what Balthazar was gonna animate next. Loved the twist of science working WITH magic…thats a new thought for me to chew on…